Sunday, February 8, 2015

I forgot Charmonde's Patrols

I completely left this out of the earlier post.

The Guards of Charmonde

Numenera Stats:
Level 3 (65% of the guards)
10 hp, 1 armor

Level 4 (35% of the guards)
14 hp, 2 armor

Either groups armed with a club, and either a spear or a heavy crossbow and 20 bolts. In my game, NPCs armed with heavy weapons do level+1 damage or 6 damage, whichever is more. This gives NPCs a chance against heavily armored, mutant murderhobos. 

For LotFP I'd probably give them 1+1 or 2 HD, an AC of 14 or 16, and morale of 10. The lower ranking guards are clad in a soft, shimmering fabric that hardens when hit quickly (mechanics for The Slow Knife are left to you, dear reader). 2HD / Level 4 guards have the same setup, adding on breastplates of glass-steel. 

They tend to use clubs and attempt nonlethal takedowns of unarmed criminals. Otherwise it's spears and crossbows.

 In addition to their physical resilience and armament, Charmonde's guards are well-furnished with cyphers. For any patrol of 4-10 guards, 1 guard will have a pouch of 2 cyphers which allow him to cast Scan as a Nano - which allows the guards to inspect and search people coming into the city. As for the rest, roll a d6 for every guard.
  1. Detonation (web), level 1d6+2, might roll to escape. (For OSR games, make a strength check. Players within the 10-foot range of the detonation could save vs. breathe weapons to avoid getting stuck, otherwise, strength check.)
  2. Same as 1
  3. Detonation (flash). Level 1d6+2. Speed test or blinded for a minute. For OSR games, a speed test could probably be a save vs device or vs magic).
  4. Same as 3
  5. Metal Death, level 1d6+2, foam spray. Covers a 3 foot cube, turns all metal within to glass. And not glass-steel, plain old regular glass.
  6. Subdual Field, 1d6+3. Operator can create an invisible field within 100 feet. The field has an area of 40 feet. Violent acts within the field are impossible and the effects last for 1d6 rounds after leaving the field. Field lasts for a minute. 
I'd say for whatever system, roll 2d6 when encountering guards. On a 2-4 they're corrupt, pretty much there to shake the players down for whatever their Scan finds, willing to sell the PCs a pass that they've been inspected and aren't carrying anything too crazy - no WMDs or artifacts that will help the war effort. Of course, the price of such a pass is fairly high, and it's not for sale until the PCs relinquish any interesting cyphers, which will probably never arrive at the royal armory. If the PCs follow these guards and don't get made, they're probably taking the goods they've stolen to a nondescript house in the quiet Neighborhood of No Note...

Otherwise they're bored and by-the-book. The city does depend on people coming in and trading, so excessive corruption gets stamped down on. 

Some laws of Charmonde

  • Cyphers and artifacts that can seriously help the war effort shall be taken with compensation, remediated via a receipt and a legal process that most people can't afford to get through. Cyphers that affect large groups of people at once, or that could level buildings, are definitely within this category; cyphers that give someone a few points to their pool or the like are not. 
  • Only nobles may where pointed shoes.
  • Only nobles may wear their hats tilted. Regular citizens who wear hats do so with quite a degree of trepidation.
  • Sedition and speaking ill of the Queen is not tolerated; other forms of speech are generally protected. Of course, sedition can cover a great many things.
  • Only authorized folk should enter the sewers beneath Charmonde.

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